Family desperate for tips on missing retired Dallas firefighter as search for him grows

HUNT COUNTY, Texas. -- A Quinlan family is desperate for any tips that could lead them to finding 70-year-old Michael Chambers, missing since Friday, March 10th.

Author:
Marie Saavedra

Published:
5:12 AM CDT March 16, 2017

Updated:
5:32 AM CDT March 16, 2017

HUNT COUNTY, Texas. -- A Quinlan family is desperate for any tips that could lead them to finding 70-year-old Michael Chambers, missing since Friday, March 10th.

"My kids want their 'PaPaw' back," said his daughter Suzy Losoya. "The kids, the grandkids, the great grand kids. They don’t know what to think."

Neither she or her sister Cheri Hanes do either.

"The dogs and the helicopters…that makes the situation seem a little too real," said Hanes.

The Hunt County Sheriff's Department says Chambers spoke to his wife around 8 a.m. Friday morning. He was last seen shopping that afternoon at Walmart in Quinlan, and he vanished sometime later. It doesn't add up for a man who was a creature of habit and order.

"I’m just trying to sort out the details of what we know and come up with any narrative that it could fit," said Hanes.

Chambers is an active. He is healthy, of sound mind and has no known enemies.

"No!" said Losoya. "He has a million friends!"

Dozens of them showed up Wednesday to comb through Hunt County brush to find him.

"We had a lot of briars to go through, and ravines, it’s thick," said Vince Aloi, who joined the search. "It was hard to stay in a straight line."

Aloi worked 36 years with Dallas Fire. That's the same number as Chambers. Still, they never met. That doesn’t matter.

"We just worked on the other ends of the town from each other, but he’s part of the fire department family, and that’s why I’m out here," said Aloi.

Investigators don’t have much to work with. Drops of blood were found in Chamber’s shed, that's on the property at his Quinlan home. But what they lack in evidence, they have in manpower, with an army of fellow public servants ready to keep searching.

"It makes us optimistic," said Losoya. "At the same time, it’s incredibly disturbing to see a search for your father."

Friends have started a GoFundMe to raise money to offer as a reward for information.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Hunt County Sheriff at 903-453-6838.